Speed of Articulate Presenter

May 17, 2011

Hello everyone,

I'm wondering if anyone can provide some insight into what drives the speed of how fast slides load when an end-user is viewing a published AP module from a web-site.

I have a client who was reviewing an Articulate presentation that was hosted on her company's website, and she told me when she was advancing through the slides, they were loading very slowly. I'm assuming some of this can be resolved by using as much master slide content as possible, and that's one thing I've been trying to do.

However, what are some of the other technical drivers that dictate screen / page load time? Obviously things like the robustness of the web server, and even the end user's internet connection and computer are factors. Anything else I should be considering that's within my control as the developer?

Any input or advice is welcomed and appreciated!

Paul

5 Replies
Brian Batt

Hi Paul and welcome to Heroes,

There are several factors that can impact the download speed of a presentation.  As you stated, using the master slides as much as possible is one way to reduce the size.  You'll also want to look at changing the audio bitrate of your audio.  For more information, see the link below:

http://www.articulatefreak.com/presenter/understanding-published-quality/

Keep in mind that Articulate will preload 2 slides in advance.  So, if your end-user is just clicking through the presentation as quickly as they can, the playback will seem slow since Articulate hasn't had time to preload the next few slides.  

Jim Dickeson

Brian, if you're still tracking this old thread, are you sure about using master slides to improve playback?  In plain old PowerPoint, moving objects that repeat on individual slides to master slides will reduce overall slide deck size.  And I've heard that it speeds up Articulate publishing, though I'm not sure how.  But only at publishing. 

Once published, a swf is a swf is a swf.  The user's computer has no way of knowing that two or more swfs may have some of the same content and to optomize accordingly.  Rather it just follows instructions - "Play this swf, play that swf, my some of these are big, but I've got to play them all."

Brian Batt

Hi Jim,

Yes, using master slides will improve the playback because the player won't have to reload the "background" file for each slide.

As an example, if you publish a 3 slide presentation and you use one master slide for each slide, you'll get the following in your output (in the data / swf folder):

bgd1l1.swf (master slide)

slide1.swf (this is the content of slide 1)

slide2.swf (this is the content of slide 2)

slide3.swf (this is the content of slide 3)

tb1.swf (slide thumbnail)

tb2.swf (slide thumbnail)

tb3.swf (slide thumbnail)

If you published a 3 slide presentation and you use a different master slide for each, you'll get the following in your output:

bgd1l1.swf (master slide)

bgd2l1.swf (master slide)

bgd3l1.swf (master slide)

slide1.swf (this is the content of slide 1)

slide2.swf (this is the content of slide 2)

slide3.swf (this is the content of slide 3)

tb1.swf (slide thumbnail)

tb2.swf (slide thumbnail)

tb3.swf (slide thumbnail)

Notice the extra bgd SWF files?  That's what you want to avoid.  The less calls the browser has to make to grab the files, the better...not to mention the benefits you get from caching.

Jim Dickeson

Brian,

Maybe I'm learning something here.  And maybe I'm getting down into the weeds, but I'm geeky that way.

I've never bothered much with master slides, mostly because I tend to have very little that is the same from slide to slide.  But I have noticed my published output always has a few bdg swfs - but just a few in a slide deck of 80 some slides.  But I never sweated them because they are always 1 kilobyte in size.  And I assume this means that, when played, more that one swf are loaded and playing at the same time, which I didn't realize.

I suppose, if one were to intentionally create more detailed master slides, that these bdg swfs would be bigger, and importantly, their slide swfs would be smaller.  But in my case, since I don't have much content repeated from slide to slide, there would actually be very little to be gained.

Interesting.

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